Sad news: the house that built Bioshock’s Rapture and Bioshock Infinite’s Columbia is shutting down. Per Ken Levine: “I am winding down Irrational Games as you know it.” He’s starting a new venture with Take-Two, keeping only about 15 employees, while BioShock changes hands to Take-Two.

Hype. It has been the pitfall of many a game and it can appear at anytime from any number of sources. An amazing trailer, such as Dead Island. A genius auteur, like Hideo Kojima and his Metal Gear Solid series. A storied franchise, like Final Fantasy. All have been the focal point of an intense wave of hype and anticipation and all, at various points, have failed to live up to the near-unattainable level of quality that the gaming masses expected.

The almost-ravenous desire for Bioshock Infinite stems from all three of the sources mentioned above. At E3 in 2010, a clever trailer brought the world’s eye upon the game for the first time. Ken Levine, the man behind the first Bioshock, itself heralded as one of the greatest achievements in gaming, was back with a brand new game, set in a brand new world with promises to blow our minds as thoroughly as Andrew Ryan did in Rapture. Then the reviews started to come in, garnering some of the most lavish praise ever bestowed upon a video game. The hype was out of control. Surely there is no way a game can live up to this kind of fervor. Bioshock Infinite is going to disappoint us just like so many of the ones that came before.

One thing we talk about a lot here on GamerSushi is the gaming hype cycle, the constant stream of pre-release materials that we get inundated with before launch. We’ve constantly tried to avoid being buried by weekly dev diaries and all that other stuff, but what do people inside the industry think?

Penny-Arcade’s new gaming news site The PA Report sat down with developer luminary Ken Levine to talk about BioShock Infinite and the way that the game is being promoted before release.

Ken got pretty candid at some parts, pointing out that Infinite was revealed before he thought it was ready, so he had to get out ahead of all the marketing in order to insure that people got their first glimpse of the game in the right context.

There’s also a lot of talk about the drip-feeding of short videos every week and the article brings up the “Heavy Hitters” video segments which highlights a new enemy every week. Even though the hardcore gamer can get frustrated with seeing this stuff all the time, Ken Levine says that he trusts the auidence to be able to filter this for themselves.

It’s an interesting article and I suggest you give it a read. What do you guys think of this? I know we’ve talked about this a few times, but this is the first occasion I’ve seen of a guy on the inside opening up about this and letting us know how he feels. Go ahead, comment!